Earnings Outlook Worries Markets

LATE NEWS - BRIEFCASE

April 14, 1997

NEW YORK — Financial markets, stung by sharp losses in stocks and bonds last week, face a minefield of corporate earnings reports and economic data in the week ahead that will heighten anxiety on Wall Street.

Market analysts said that with the Dow industrials almost 10 percent off their record highs, options expirations coming Friday and the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond nearing 7.25 percent, volatility is all but guaranteed.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 148 points, or 2.3 percent, to 6,392 on Friday.

Chrysler, UAW to meet today

DETROIT

Union and Chrysler Corp. bargainers are scheduled to resume talks today to try to end a crippling parts plant strike, even though a union official said Sunday that neither side has shown any sign of softening its position.

United Auto Workers Local 51 President Sam Nardicchio said informal communications during the past few days have gone nowhere.

About 1,800 members of Local 51 struck Chrysler's Mound Road engine plant in Detroit Thursday. Workers are demanding that Chrysler drop its plans to shift production of drive shafts from the plant to an outside supplier, a move that could cost the local 250 jobs.

Netscape pushes 'push' software

PALO ALTO, Calif.

Netscape Communications Corp. is expected this week to launch its own entry into the crowded market to enable companies to ''push'' content out over the Internet. The move is the next stage of the company's showdown with software giant Microsoft Corp.

Push technology is the term for software that can enable news and software upgrades to be automatically delivered to people's computers via the Internet.

Machine tool orders up sharply

NEW YORK

Orders for American-made machine tools surged in February compared with a year earlier and reflected strong demand from U.S. manufacturers, said a trade report released Sunday.

The report from the Association for Manufacturing Technology and the American Machine Tool Distributors' Association estimated domestic orders totaled $562 million, up 22 percent from $461 million in February 1996.